Archive for February 6th, 2007

A brother denies himself, passing up comfort foods that would satisfy the hungry god which bellows up his gullet from the distended meat sack he once called a stomach, and what does he get for his troubles?

Motherfuckin’ pound and a half. I stepped on the scale and lost merely a pound and a half (bringing the grand total loss for the month to 22 pounds).

Let’s break that down, shall we? You head into the deli and ask for a pound of turkey breast. Add another half pound, and that’s all I lost.

You take a massive shit – I mean, a true colon-cracker – and that’s about a pound. Add in the weight of the toilet paper you use to clean up (once it’s wet) and that’s about a pound and a half.

Some psycho who spends his free time filling composition notebooks captures your ass and orders you, upon penalty of death, to cut, from your body, a pound of flesh. If he changed horses in mid-stream and asked you to add a half pound of muscle too, that’s about what I lost.

Fucking fucktard diet. Results, bitch! Results are what’ll keep a man dedicated to the cause. The scale says a pound and a half, and I tell the scale, in no uncertain terms, to go fuck itself; to get bent. And then it dawns on me that I’m getting hostile with a scale, and realize I, myself, am only a step or two away from filling a roomful of composition notebooks… and maybe even dropping a head (not a dick) in a box. So I collect myself and reframe the news.

At least I didn’t gain a pound and a half.

And whose fault is it anyway? Shouldn’t the blame lie on the guy who downed some pinto beans and chips and salsa this week? Shouldn’t the blame lie on the flabby douche who hasn’t ventured off his bed, into the world of cardio-related activity? You can’t blame Canada; you gots’ta blame yourself. Get the fuck out there, Fat Boy; work them thunder thighs a little.

And that’s what I intend to do.

Massive weight loss has sometimes predicated great change in my life. Indeed, the first time I did OptiFast – back in ’98 – I lost forty pounds and ultimately severed my twelve year, on-again/off-again star-cros’t romance with Kim Loughran, my high school (and then some) girlfriend. It was after this (somewhat) dramatic pounds-droppage that I sat down with a USA Today journalist in Los Angeles to talk about my post-”Amy” plans. That interview resulted in two things: a) this article, and b) my eventual marriage to said correspondent.

The next time I did OptiFast, in the months leading up to “Clerks II”, I lost between seventy and eighty pounds (reached the same goal weight, mind you, but there was much more to lose, seven years later). That go-round didn’t really result in personal life upheaval.

But now, as I’m a little over a quarter of the way to my goal weight with this recent foray back into OptiFast, I’m wondering what kind of conversion I’ll make in the wake of losing nearly a hundred pounds. The big change, I’m thinking, will be yet another change in my relationship – but this time, it’ll be… it’ll have to be… a big change in my relationship with food. After all this work and self-denial, I can’t just go back to the way things were. Portion control and caloric intake has to be the order of the day. I’ve never been a drinker or drugger, but where I’ve historically indulged like Tony Montana was with junk food. I never had a bowl of cereal; I’d eat a box. I’d never have a side of mashed potatoes, I’d have a side of whatever I was eating with my meal of mashed potatoes. If (when) I hit my goal weight, behavioral changes that’ve been ingrained for well-over a decade now have to be chucked in favor of a new way of life.

But that’s over fifty pounds (and three months) from now. Until then, I’ll just concentrate on staying the fuck away from the kitchen.

The battle of the bulge continues…

In the meantime, I’ll continue whoring my shit.

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